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-Sanders Corbit, my dear doubles friend who died recently from Lou Gherig's!===
Get ready as the press, media and Liberals shove the former incompetent Sec. of State down our nation's collective throats and rather than choke on the idea of Hillary becoming president, I daresay, the gullible majority will dutifully swallow hard. (See 1 below.)
This from a long time friend and fellow memo reader: "I must say, I am very surprised that President Obama didn't win a second or even third Nobel Peace Prize in 2014-- for his courageous and peace-loving actions in Benghazi/ Libya, drawing a red line and permanently ending the use of chemical warfare in Syria, finally ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ridding the world once and for all of Al Queda in Pakistan, stopping the Russian imperialism in Ukraine and Georgia, eliminating Mexican cartels though Fast-and Furious, and humanely opening the US borders to anybody and everybody including ebola carriers (except for PhD's in science and engineering from China and India, of course). I guess the committee will just have to wait another year or so."
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It is becoming increasingly evident we cannot defeat ISIS from the air, with questionable help from reluctant allies who believe our own heart is not in the fight because we continue to allow Qatar, to play both sides while we refuse to arm the Kurds because Erdogan's Turkey, a NATO member, would be offended
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Are Obama and Kerry gearing up to slap Israel around some more because Israel might not agree to unacceptable terms they may be told to eat? Time will tell but Obama needs to shift the blame for his own disastrous failures vis a vis Syria, Iran and ISIS and he never allows blame to cross his desk. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1) Hillary's reputation for competence as Secretary of State erodes from within
Hillary’s tenure as Secretary of State continues to draw internal criticism.
The former Secretary of State is coy about her 2016 POTUS candidacy intentions, but the department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) continues to identify administrative incompetence concerning financial and information security matters during her tenure.
In an October 6, 2014 Washington Times article entitled “State Dept. inspector general: “More evidence of rampant mismanagement under Hillary Clinton,” T. Becket Adams reported that, “The State Department's Office of Inspector General has released another ‘management alert’ detailing rampant mismanagement within the agency, much of it during Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tenure.”
Here’s a summary of each of the three “management alerts:”
(1) The first surfaced in a November 12, 2013 memorandum from the DOS’s Inspector General (IG), Steve A. Linick two months after he became the IG. The subject line of the memo reads: “Management Alert: OIG Findings of Significant and Recurring Weaknesses in the Department of State Information System Security Program (AUD-IT-14-04).”
The first paragraph outlines the “weaknesses”:
The Department of State (Department) is entrusted to safeguard sensitive information, which is often the target of terrorist and criminal organizations. Cyber attacks against government organizations appear to be on the rise, including state-sponsored efforts to exploit U.S. Government information security vulnerabilities. The Department is responsible for preserving and protecting classified information vital to the preservation of national security in high risk environments across the globe. The Department also undertakes significant numbers of financial and other transactions, including, for instance, the daily collection of millions of dollars in consular fees. In addition the Department maintains records on approximately 192 million current passports, which contain such sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) as dates of birth and social security numbers. To protect this information, the Department must ensure that its Information System Security Program and management control structure are operationally effective.”
In short, Hillary’s DOS didn’t adequately safeguard sensitive information.
(2) The second “management alert” concerns missing documents relating to $6 billion of Department of State (DOS) contracts during Hillary’s tenure.
This alert attracted more attention that (1). It has been the subject of American Thinker coverage here, here, and here.
(3) This third alert came in a September 26, 2014 memorandum from Linick with the subject line: “Management Alert (Grants Management Deficiencies).” The introduction to the document reads:
“The management and oversight of grants poses heightened financial risk to the Department of State (Department). In FY 2012, the Department obligated more than $1.6 billion for approximately 14,000 grants and cooperative agreements worldwide. This is a significant outlay of funds, which makes oversight and accountability of the funds even more critical.
Grants present special oversight challenges because, unlike contracts, grants do not generally require the recipient to deliver any specific good or service to the government. The Department uses them to award assistance to individuals and organizations for a variety of purposes, such as fostering educational and cultural exchanges with citizens of other countries, promoting democracy and civil society, facilitating refugee resettlement, combating human trafficking, and developing the law-enforcement and justice-system capabilities of other nations.
The Office of Inspector General (OIG) and other oversight agencies have identified a number of significant deficiencies in the grant-management process. Indeed, OIG has designated the management of grants, contracts, and cooperative and interagency agreements as one of the Department’s major management challenges each year from fiscal year 2008. Furthermore, nearly 40 percent of OIG inspections of all types issued since 2010 have identified specific grant-management deficiencies in the inspected entity, even though not all inspected entities managed grants. Audits conducted by OIG have reported similar deficiencies, including insufficient oversight caused by too few staff managing too many grants, insufficient training of grant officials, and inadequate documentation and closeout of grant activities.”
In short, the OIG accuses the Hillary DOS of insufficient oversight concerning the expenditure of $1,600,000,000 spread out in 14,000 grants sent all over the planet.
During the six years before Linick became the IG in September 2013, the position was unfilled.
So, what’s behind all the scrutiny now concerning the operations of Hillary’s DOS? After all, what difference at this point does it make, anyway?
Is it because there is finally an OIG to conduct inspections? And, why didn’t Hillary fill the position years ago?
Linick was Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division Fraud Section, and Executive Director of the National Procurement Fraud Task Force at the Department of Justice.
Might John Kerry be softening up a potential key primary opponent in the event he decides to run for the Presidency in 2016?
In any regard, this growing litany of “management alerts” dating back to her time as Secretary of State will weaken any claims Hillary makes concerning her achievements in that position.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2) ISIS: Can the West Win Without a Ground Game?
by Jonathan Spyer
The United States and its allies have launched a military campaign whose stated goal is, in the words of President Barack Obama, to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the Islamic State (I.S., also known as ISIS or ISIL) established by Sunni jihadis in a contiguous land area stretching from western Iraq to the Syrian-Turkish border.
 Smoke rises from a U.S. air strike on Islamic State positions in Kobani. |
As the aerial campaign begins in earnest, many observers are wondering what exactly its tactical and strategic objectives are, and how they will be achieved. A number of issues immediately arise.
Any state—even a provisional, slapdash, and fragile one like the jihadi entity now spreading across Iraq and Syria—cannot be "destroyed" from the air. At a certain point, forces on the ground will have to enter and replace the I.S. power. It is not yet clear who is to play this role—especially in the Islamic State's heartland of Raqqa province in Syria.
In Iraq, the national military and the Kurdish Pesh Merga are now having some successes at chipping away at the Islamic State's outer holdings. The role of U.S. air support is crucial here. But the center of the Islamic State is not Iraq, and both the Iraqi forces and the Pesh Merga have made clear that they will not cross the border into Syria. This leaves a major question as to who is to perform this task, if the objectives outlined by President Obama are to be achieved.
The answer we have heard most often of late is that elements among the Syrian rebels will be vetted by the U.S., trained in cooperation with the Saudis, and then deployed as the force to destroy the IS on the ground.
If this is indeed the plan, it is deeply problematic.
The Syrian rebels are characterized by extreme disunity, questionable effectiveness, and the presence of hardline Sunni Islamist elements among their most committed units. There are certainly forces of an anti-jihadist ideology among them—the most well-known being the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, headed by Jamal Ma'arouf from the Jebel Zawiya area in northern Syria, and the smaller Harakat Hazm. Both movements have benefitted from Western aid in recent months.
The Syrian rebels are characterized by extreme disunity, questionable effectiveness, and the presence of hardline Sunni Islamist elements among their most committed units. |
The problem, however, is that these organizations are quite prepared to work with salafi groupings whose worldview is essentially identical to that of the I.S., even if their methods are somewhat different. Thus, if we observe the recent fighting between Assad's forces and rebels in the Quneitra area along the border with the Israeli Golan Heights, it is clear that the main contribution to rebel achievements came from the Jabhat al-Nusra group, which constitutes the "official franchise" of the core al-Qaeda group in Syria.
Reliable sources confirm that Nusra cooperates with other rebel groups in southern Syria and has even been prepared to minimize its own role, so as to allow other groups to present achievements as their own to Western and Arab patrons and thus secure a continued flow of arms, benefiting all factions.
What this means is that by championing these rebel elements as the ground force which will seek to enter and destroy a weakened I.S. in Raqqa province, the U.S. would be putting itself in the position of supporting one group of Sunni jihadis against another.
In Iraq, while the Kurdish Pesh Merga cooperates de facto with Iran, their alliance is pragmatic and tactical, one that the Kurds would gladly break given the possibility of clear Western sponsorship.
But the fierce condemnations in recent days (even by supposedly "pro-Western" rebel groups such as Hazm) of the U.S. bombing raids into Syria indicate that there is a deeper problem here. The alliance between these Sunni rebel groups and the salafis has a common anti-Western component to it.
It is, in any case, not clear if these Sunni rebels will prove able to defeat the I.S., but even if they were to do so, the presence of radical anti-Western elements among them attests to the danger of a policy of support and sponsorship of them.
Of course, the Sunni jihadis are not the only dangerous players on the ground. Another possible, no less troubling, outcome of the air campaign against the Islamic State could be the return of Bashar al-Assad's forces to eastern Syria, from which they have been largely expelled over the last year. It is not at all hard to imagine a scenario in which once the I.S. has been weakened by Western air attacks, the Syrian military and its Iranian-backed allies will be able to make gains.
Indeed, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are already present in northern Iraq (and, of course, in Syria as well) and IRGC personnel have taken part in the fighting in Iraq in recent weeks. Qods force teams are reportedly located at Samarra, Baghdad, Karbala, and the former al-Sahra Air Base near Tikrit. Iran has deployed seven SU-25 ground attack aircraft which have played a role in offering air support to the Kurds and Iraqi special forces.
The Assad regime and its Iranian backers [are] enemies of the West of significantly greater potency and seriousness than the Islamic State itself. |
Following intensive Western bombing, the possibility of the Islamic State eventually being sandwiched between pro-Iranian forces on either side before being destroyed would be a real one. This would achieve the desired goal of destroying the jihadi entity, but it could end up handing a major victory to the Assad regime and its Iranian backers—enemies of the West of significantly greater potency and seriousness than the Islamic State itself.
Such a result would be somewhat reminiscent of the Iraq invasion of 2003, in which the destruction of the Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein ended up largely helping Iran.
How does the West get out of this mess? The discussion about which ground force should be used to replace the Islamic State is itself confused by a much larger misunderstanding regarding the nature of the war now taking place in Iraq and in Syria (and periodically spilling over into Lebanon).
The I.S. has now been depicted as the main problematic factor emerging from this conflict. But the Islamic State is in fact merely a particularly extreme and brutal manifestation of a broader process taking place in this area, in which political Islam of a Sunni variety is at war with the Shia political Islam of Iran and its proxies (especially Hezbollah and the Assad regime).
The I.S. may promote a particularly lurid and repulsive version of Sunni political Islam, but in its beliefs and in its practices it does not represent some unique presence in the Syrian and Iraqi context. Rather, it is little more than a particularly virulent manifestation of a strain of politics and ideology which is the primary cause of the conflict taking place across the region.
In the two scenarios discussed above, both quite plausible outcomes of a Western air campaign, the I.S. would be defeated and replaced by another version of Islamism—either that of its fellow Sunnis, or that of the rival Shi'ites.
A third possibility, however, is that the White House does not actually intend to pursue a policy intended to physically destroy the Islamic State in its heartland in northern Syria. Certainly, more recent statements emerging from the Administration appear to be preparing to "walk back" the President's comments.
White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said in mid-September that success for U.S. policy vis-à-vis the I.S. would come when the group "no longer threatens our friends in the region, no longer threatens the United States." This sounds like the introduction to a more modest policy of degrading I.S. capabilities, rather than seeking to "destroy" the Islamic State.
Of course, such a modified objective would end the dilemma over which ground forces to ally with. On the other hand, it would also have the effect of a tacit admission that the U.S. did not intend to promote its policy as originally stated by the President in the aftermath of the horrific murder of two U.S. citizens by the Islamic State.
What is taking place acrossSyria and Iraq, and across their borders into Lebanon, Turkey, and Iran, is a sectarian war, made possible because of the decline of the police states which for half a century kept the lid on sectarian differences. |
But whether or not the goal of destroying the Islamic State is pursued with vigor, the current failure to see accurately what is happening in the Levant and Mesopotamia looks set to remain. This, in turn, looks set to prevent the emergence of a coherent policy and a coherent allocation of resources.
What is taking place across Syria and Iraq, and across their borders into Lebanon, Turkey, and Iran, is a sectarian war, made possible because of the decline of the police states which for half a century kept the lid on sectarian differences. The regional ambitions of Iran, which has clients and proxies in all three countries, exacerbate this dynamic. The attempts by Saudi Arabia to block Iran's advance toward the Mediterranean, and by Qatar and Turkey to sponsor various Sunni jihadi elements, have produced a far more confused, and far less effective, Sunni side in this struggle.
The struggle itself, in turn, can be traced back to the failure by these states to develop coherent notions of citizenship or stable national identities in the post-Ottoman period. In other words, this war has been a long time coming, but now it is here.
Because the nature of this struggle is not widely grasped in the West, policy appears somewhat rudderless. This is reflected in the current discussion regarding the response to the Islamic State.
First, Assad was the enemy. This was made clear enough not only by his support for Hezbollah and attempts to nuclearize, but also by his unspeakable brutality and use of chemical weapons against his own citizens.
Then, when the brutality of some of the rebels became apparent, Western public interest in supporting the rebels receded. Soon the I.S. emerged as the new bogeyman. Declarations for its destruction became de rigueur, though it is far from clear how this is going to be carried out—and a de facto alliance with Iran and its clients, at least in Iraq, has emerged. This was seen in the expulsion of the I.S. from the town of Amerli, a pivotal moment in the major setbacks faced by the organization in recent days. In that town, Shi'ite militias were backed by American air power—to telling effect against the Sunni jihadis.
But is it really coherent policy to be backing murderous Shi'ite sectarians against murderous Sunni ones? It is not. Of course, when the West backs the Sunni rebels in Syria, the precise opposite is happening. Weaponry donated to "moderate" rebels then inevitably turns up in the hands of Sunni jihadis, who do most of the fighting associated with the Syrian "rebellion." The result is that in Iraq the U.S. is helping one side of the Sunni-Shia war, and in Syria it's helping the other side.
Only when it is understood that the West cannot partner with either version of political Islam does it become possible to formulate a coherent policy toward the Sunni jihadi forces, on the one hand, and toward the Iran-led bloc, on the other.
Such a policy must rest on the identification and strengthening of non-Islamist forces willing to band together and partner with the West. Not all of them are perfect characters, but they all understand the threat that political Islam poses.
Most obviously, there is a line of pro-American states along the southern side of the arena of the war. These are Israel, Jordan, and in a far more partial and problematic way, Saudi Arabia. Both Israel and Jordan have demonstrated that they are able to successfully contain the spread of the chaos coming out of the north. Both are well-organized states with powerful militaries and intelligence structures. Jordan has clearly benefitted from the deployment of U.S. special forces to prevent incursions by the I.S. Israel has also made clear that its resources will be available to assist the Jordanians should this be required. (Egypt, too, while not in the immediate vicinity of the conflict, can be a silent partner as well—as its campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood and tough line against Hamas have shown, it is nothing if not a virulent opponent to political Islam.)
This is what the proper coordination of allied states is supposed to look like. And it works in containing the conflict. To the east of the war's arena is of course Iran. To its west is the Mediterranean Sea. To its north is a long, contiguous line of Kurdish control, shared between the Kurdish Regional Government of President Massoud Barzani in northern Iraq, as well as the three enclaves created by the PKK-linked Democratic Union Party (PYD) in northern Syria. The YPG militia, which is the military force in these enclaves, has fought the I.S. almost since its inception, and has largely prevailed in keeping the jihadis out of the Kurdish areas.
As part of a strategy of containment, the West should increase support for and recognition of both the Kurdish enclaves in the north of Syria and the Kurdish Regional Government itself. |
As part of a strategy of containment, the West should increase support for and recognition of both the Kurdish enclaves in the north of Syria and the Kurdish Regional Government itself. Both are elements capable of containing the spread of the jihadis from the north. It has become clear in recent days that the Pesh Merga, despite early setbacks, is a useful instrument in preventing the further advance westward of the Islamic State, and in so doing protecting the investment of international oil companies in the oil-rich parts of Iraq. The YPG militia, though poorly equipped, has also avoided major losses.
Such a principle of alliance will also encourage the West to reconsider the involvement of Turkey. As events of the last few years have shown, Turkey cannot be a reliable ally in the struggle against political Islam, because its ruling party, AKP, is itself an Islamist party. This is not a theoretical formulation. Turkey's support for Islamist militias in northern Syria and its opening of its border for them has been a major contributing factor in the proliferation of these elements. There is also considerable evidence that Turkey at the very least turned a blind idea to the activities of the I.S. in the border area in 2013, and may well have offered some help to the jihadis in their fight with the YPG.
In order to grasp the rationale for a policy of dual containment, the nature of the war between rival sectarian forces must be grasped. There is also a need for the clear understanding that the effort to preserve at all costs the territorial integrity of "Iraq" and "Syria" is mistaken. Rather, what should take place is support for those forces committed to order, as listed above, and non-support for the forces of political Islam.
In other words: If political Islam (rather than one specific jihadi group, to quickly be replaced by another) is the real problem, then the real solution is to ally, forcefully and over the long haul, with those forces most committed to stopping it: Israel, Jordan, the Saudis, and the Kurds.
So it may be seen that a lack of strategic understanding of the nature of the conflict being waged is preventing the development of a coherent response to the specific problem of the Islamic State, along with the parallel problems of Shia terror groups such as Hezbollah, and the ambitions of the Islamic Republic of Iran. At root is the failure to grasp the implacable nature of political Islam in both its Sunni and Shia variants at the present time.
From this original error, all further errors, and as we can see there are many, inevitably follow.
Jonathan Spyer is a Middle East analyst focusing on Syria, Lebanon and Israeli strategic affairs. He is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Herzliya, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, and is the author of The Transforming Fire: the Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict (Continuum, 2011).
2a) The Micromanager in Chief
How Syria overwhelmed an overcentralized White House
Throughout 2012, as signs mounted that militants in Syria were growing stronger, the debate in the White House followed a pattern. In meeting after meeting, as officials from agencies outside the executive residence advocated arming pro-Western rebels or other forms of action, President Barack Obama’s closest White House aides bluntly delivered the president’s verdict: no.
“It became clear from the people very close to the president that he had deep, deep reservations about intervening in Syria,” said Julianne Smith, who served as deputy national security advisor to Vice President Joe Biden. “And the likelihood of altering those views was low, very low.”
This summer, events overwhelmed the status quo. In June, the radical group Islamic State, after seizing wide swaths of Syria, conquered Iraq's second-largest city and threatened Baghdad as the Iraqi army collapsed. The insurgents beheaded two American journalists, increasing U.S. public support for military action. Finally, U.S. intelligence agencies detected foreign jihadists who they believed had moved to Syria to plot attacks against the United States and Europe.
The radicals had undermined the administration’s argument that it had successfully ended the war in Iraq and were threatening Obama’s record of defending the homeland. The jihadists, said Smith, “turned the debate on its head.”
On September 18, Obama reversed his three-and-a-half-year opposition to military action in Syria and ordered open-ended airstrikes against militants. It wasn’t his first U-turn on Syria. In August 2012, Obama had warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that using chemical weapons was a “red line” Syria dare not cross; when evidence emerged that Damascus had gassed the rebels and civilians, Obama opted not to respond with force.
In August 2012, Obama had warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that using chemical weapons was a “red line” Syria dare not cross; when evidence emerged that Damascus had gassed the rebels and civilians, Obama opted not to respond with force.
The bombing campaign, which could last for years, is a major course correction for a president with a famously cautious foreign policy. Obama’s handling of Syria—the early about-face, the repetitive debates, the turnabout in September—is emblematic, say current and former top U.S. officials, of his highly centralized, deliberative, and often reactive foreign policy.
These officials say Obama and his inner circle made three fundamental mistakes. The withdrawal of all American troops from neighboring Iraq and the lack of a major effort to arm Syria’s moderate rebels, they say, gave Islamic State leeway to spread. Internal debates focused on the costs of U.S. intervention in Syria, while downplaying the risks of not intervening. And the White House underestimated the damage to U.S. credibility caused by Obama making public threats to Assad and then failing to enforce them.
This week, former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta joined Hillary Clinton and a growing list of former cabinet members and aides who said Obama made major mistakes in the Middle East. Panetta singled out the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. “It was clear to me—and many others,” Panetta wrote in his memoir, Worthy Fights, “that withdrawing all our forces would endanger the fragile stability then barely holding Iraq together.”
Such arguments were rejected at the time inside the White House, where the foreign-policy machine has grown dramatically in power under Obama and cabinet members and their departments have felt marginalized. The National Security Council staff, which coordinates U.S. defense, diplomatic, and intelligence policy from inside the White House, has nearly doubled in size on his watch. It has gone from about 50 under George H.W. Bush to 100 under Bill Clinton, 200 under George W. Bush, and about 370 under Obama.
Decisions small as well as large are made at the White House, often with scant influence from the Pentagon and State Department and their much larger teams of analysts and advisors. Senior Cabinet officials spend long hours in meetings debating tactics, not long-term strategy, the officials said.
Robert S. Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Damascus, recalled long meetings to debate small issues, such as which Syrian opposition members he could meet with and whether it was okay to give cell phones, media training, and management classes to a local Syrian government council controlled by the opposition.
Sometimes, this more centralized White House system becomes overwhelmed. “There’s a real choke point,” said Michèle Flournoy, who served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the No. 3 Pentagon civilian, in Obama’s first term. “There’s only so much bandwidth and there’s only so much they can handle at one time. So, things start to slow down.”
Flournoy and other former officials who criticize the administration’s approach concede that the most important decisions—using military force—must ultimately be the president's call. They argue, though, that intensified White House control has resulted in the United States being behind the curve, whether in trying to counter Russian propaganda about the Ukraine crisis or battling online recruitment by jihadists.
Syria, where the estimated death toll has topped 190,000, is cited as a prime example. By the fall of 2012, covertly arming Syria’s rebels had been accepted by Obama’s top three national-security Cabinet members—Clinton, Panetta, and CIA chief David Petraeus—as the best way to slow radicalism in Syria. The president and his inner circle first rejected the advice, then mounted a small-scale program to arm the rebels, and now, two years later, after Islamic State has seized swaths of Syria and Iraq, embrace the approach.
Obama’s aides say tight White House coordination is a must in an era when the United States faces threats like terrorism, which requires harnessing the capabilities of the Pentagon, the U.S. intelligence community, the State Department, and other agencies. It’s the president’s duty to take ultimate responsibility for matters of war and peace, they say.
“Other than, of course, the men and women in uniform” and other officials deployed abroad, said Ben Rhodes, a White House deputy national security advisor, “only the president of the United States is assuming the risk of the cost of action."
This account of Obama’s national-security decision-making is based on interviews with more than 30 current and former U.S. government officials, who have served both Democratic and Republican administrations going back to President Richard Nixon.
In some ways, Obama’s closer control and the frequent marginalization of the State and Defense departments continues a trend begun under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. But under Obama, the centralization has gone further. It was the White House, not the Pentagon, that decided to send two additional Special Operations troops to Yemen. The White House, not the State Department, now oversees many details of U.S. embassy security—a reaction to Republican attacks over the lethal 2012 assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. A decision to extend $10 million in non-lethal aid to Ukraine also required White House vetting and approval.
On weightier issues, major decisions sometimes catch senior Cabinet officers unawares. One former senior U.S. official said Obama’s 2011 decision to abandon difficult troop negotiations with Baghdad and remove the last U.S. soldiers from Iraq surprised the Pentagon and was known only by the president and a small circle of aides.
The president, initially perceived as one of the greatest communicators of his generation, is now viewed as having done a poor job of defining and defending his foreign policy, polls indicate. A majority of Americans—54 percent—disapprove of Obama’s foreign-policy performance, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. That's one of the lowest ratings of his presidency.
Rhodes, one of Obama’s longest-serving national-security aides, says a series of complex world crises, not policy mistakes, has driven down the president’s approval numbers. More broadly, he says, Obama has been right to be deliberative in the wake of costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “What he’s always said is that if there’s a threat against us, we will act,” Rhodes said. “But when it comes to shaping events in cultures that are foreign to the United States we have to have some degree of realism.”
Obama has had notable national-security successes. His record of protecting U.S. territory from attack remains largely unblemished. Current and former officials praise his policy on nuclear talks with Iran as clear and consistent. He is building a coalition against Islamic State that includes Arab nations participating in airstrikes with the United States, Britain, France, and others.
And while past presidents faced grave dangers, most notably the possibility of Cold War Armageddon, for Obama the world is very different. The decisions he must make on using U.S. military force have multiplied. This reality, supporters say, is overlooked by detractors.
Obama has launched a humanitarian military intervention in Libya; overseen counterterrorism operations in Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq,Afghanistan, and elsewhere; moved to end his predecessor’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; wrestled with lethal threats to U.S. hostages and diplomatic posts; and sent the American military to West Africa to help tackle the Ebola virus and search for kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls.
Current and former officials say the globalized world of Twitter and 24/7 news creates an expectation at home and abroad that the United States will quickly take a position on any foreign-policy issue. The demand for instant American positions—and American leadership—can be overwhelming.
“One of the biggest problems in Washington,” said retired General James Jones, who was Obama’s national security advisor from 2009 to 2010, “is to find the time to think strategically, not tactically. You’d wake up and there would be a new crisis and you’d be scrambling to deal with them.”
Six years of grinding partisan warfare over foreign policy (and much else) have left Obama increasingly fatalistic about his critics. While on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard in late August, he was widely criticized for golfing after making a condolence call to the family of murdered American journalist James Foley. Minutes after declaring Foley’s murderer—Islamic State—a “cancer” that had “no place in the 21st century,” Obama teed off with a campaign contributor, an old friend, and a former NBA star. He later told aides the criticism was inevitable. 'No matter what I do,' he said, 'my enemies will attack me.'
Far from being disengaged or indecisive on foreign affairs, as he is sometimes portrayed, Obama drives decision-making, say current and former officials. The president prepares thoroughly for meetings, has an encyclopedic memory, and methodically dissects problems, former officials who have been with him in meetings say. The former law professor dominates foreign-policy sessions, from small Oval Office gatherings to formal National Security Council meetings he chairs. Obama promoted open NSC debate, asked for dissenting opinions from cabinet members, and called on junior officials who traditionally don’t speak at such meetings, they said.
Some aides complained that alternative views on some subjects, such as Syria, had little impact on the thinking of the president and his inner circle. Despite the open debate, meetings involving even Cabinet secretaries were little more than “formal formalities,” with decisions made by Obama and a handful of White House aides, one former senior U.S. official said.
Obama “considers himself to be analyst in chief, in addition to commander in chief,” on certain issues, according to Fred Hof, a former State Department envoy on Syria. “He comes to a lot of the very fundamental judgments on his own, based on his own instincts, based on his own knowledge, based on his own biases, if you will.”
The president’s supporters say his approach is based on principle, not bias. He ran on a platform of winding down the Iraq War and made his views crystal-clear on military action in the Middle East. Obama believed that the human and financial costs of large-scale interventions weren’t worth the limited outcomes they produced. He held that U.S. force could not change the internal dynamics of countries in the region.
* * *
In August 2011, Obama issued a 620-word statement on Syria that his aides hoped would put him on the right side of history. After weeks of pressure from Congress, Syrian-Americans, and allies in the Middle East and Europe, he called for Assad to “step aside.” “It is time for the Syrian people to determine their own destiny,” Obama said.
Ford, ambassador to Syria from 2011 to 2014, said he supported the statement, but now regrets it because Washington didn’t back up the words with action. He said the Syria case reflects a pattern in the administration of issuing public statements without developing a clear policy.
When Assad refused to relinquish power, it became clear that the administration and its allies lacked a plan—or the political will—to forcibly remove him. American and European credibility in the region suffered. Taking the removal of Assad into their own hands, Turkey and other Arab states overtly backed—or turned a blind eye to—the emergence of jihadist groups in Syria. American officials warned the countries that it would be impossible to control the militants, according to former U.S. officials. The Turks, according to one former official, replied that with Washington itself sitting on the sidelines, they had no choice but to back certain anti-Assad radicals.
As jihadists gained strength in the Syrian opposition in 2012, members of Obama’s first-term cabinet began to support covert U.S. action in Syria. In the summer of 2012, three senior advisors outside the White House—Clinton, Panetta, and Petraeus—proposed that the CIA train and equip the relatively moderate Syrian rebels operating as the Free Syrian Army. At about that time, Ford said, the Free Syrian Army was warning—and U.S. officials confirmed independently—that militant groups were luring away fighters with cash. The more Western-friendly rebels had few funds to counter with. In December 2012, Obama rejected the proposal.When Assad refused to relinquish power, it became clear that the administration and its allies lacked a plan—or the political will—to forcibly remove him. American and European credibility in the region suffered. Taking the removal of Assad into their own hands, Turkey and other Arab states overtly backed—or turned a blind eye to—the emergence of jihadist groups in Syria. American officials warned the countries that it would be impossible to control the militants, according to former U.S. officials. The Turks, according to one former official, replied that with Washington itself sitting on the sidelines, they had no choice but to back certain anti-Assad radicals.
Eight months later, in August 2013, U.S. intelligence concluded that Assad had used poison gas against rebels and civilians in a Damascus suburb, defying Obama’s public warning against chemical attacks. For a week, Obama appeared on the verge of launching airstrikes. After a walk with Chief of Staff and longtime aide Denis McDonough on the White House grounds, Obama changed course without consulting his national-security Cabinet members and announced he would seek Congress’ approval, which never materialized. Instead, Washington and Moscow agreed on a deal to remove Syria's chemical arms. The missile strike reversal was widely cited by officials interviewed as the clearest example of Obama not engaging in a full Cabinet-level debate before making a strategic decision.
State Department officials warned for years that extremists would benefit from a power vacuum in Syria. “We were saying this area is going to be controlled by extremists and they’ll link up with Iraq,” said Ford. Obama made the wrong decision, Ford concludes. “It’s clear, in retrospect, that they needed more help then to counter the extremism.”
Another former official involved in Syria policy defended Obama. He said that in the early years of the Syrian conflict, with the long Iraq War fresh in their minds, Obama’s senior lieutenants struggled to find any vital national interest that would merit American intervention. Warnings of terrorism were discussed, this official said. But the White House responded that there were “more efficient and cheaper ways of dealing with the threat than intervening in Syria.”
Smith, the former NSC aide, said the Obama years hold a lesson. "The instinct is to centralize decision-making with the hope of exerting more control," she said. "But that often limits the U.S. government's agility and effectiveness at a time when those two traits are most needed."
2b) Up To A Point: What We Really Need Is a Nobel War Prize
By P.J. O'Rourke
At least this year’s Nobel Peace Prize wasn’t a howler like the 1973 award to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho for making love, not war in Vietnam. Or the 1919 award to Woodrow Wilson for chopping Central Europe into an angry hash, helping put the “vs.” in theVersailles,Treaty and screwing the pooch on U.S. membership in the League of Nations.
Then there was the 1978 Prize given to Mohamed Anwar Al-Sadat and Menachem Begin for making sure everything was okey-dokey between the Arabs and the Jews. And the 1994 Prize to Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres for making double sure.
In 2001 the United Nations and Kofi Annan got the NPP “for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world.” And what a quiet, tidy planet it’s been since then.
In 2002 it went to Jimmy Carter, presumably for his effort to end the Cold War by losing it. In 1990 the winner was Mikhail Gorbachev, who actually did what Carter had merely tried to do.
The 2005 Prize was bestowed upon the International Atomic Energy Agency and its chief Mohamed ElBaradei, doubtless for their providing proof positive that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction
and thereby preventing the 2003 Iraq War.
The European Union was the 2012 recipient thanks to its “advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe,” just in time for the coup in Kiev, Russian annexation of Crimea, and Ukrainian civil war.
Medaling in 2007 were the International Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore. Al Gore? Yep, Al Gore. Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Al Gore, however, sold his Current TV channel to Al Jazeera, which is funded by the royal family of famously carbon neutral Qatar.
And what, exactly, do the International Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore have to do with peace? About as much as the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize presented to Barack Obama for showing up.
Not that there is anything to be said against the 2014 Nobel Prize committee honoring Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi.
Ms. Yousafazi is a stalwart Pakistani 17-year-old who, two years ago, was shot in the head by a Taliban villain for the offence of being a girl attending school. She recovered and put herself further in harm’s way by publicly campaigning for the education of Muslim women.
Mr. Satyarthi is a brave-hearted 60-year-old Indian who gave up his career as a college professor to battle the scourge of indentured child labor in the rat hole factories of Southeast Asia.
But if the purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize is to celebrate and assist courageous and resilient victims of brutality and valiant advocates of righteous but unpopular causes, then the 1946 prize should have gone to survivors of Nazi concentration camps instead of to Emily Greene Balch and John Raleigh Mott—presidents, respectively, of The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the YMCA World Alliance. Free swim! And the 1905 prize should have gone to Susan B. Anthony, not Bertha von Suttner, Austro-Hungarian author of the war-is-naughty screed Lay Down Your Arms.
Sometimes the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded as if encouraging courage were its purpose. Elie Wiesel, who was involved with the Irgun Zionist underground, is a 1986 Peace Laureate. Lech Walesa won in 1983. So did Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1964. More power to them.
But the stated purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize, per Alfred Nobel’s will, is that it be awarded to the person who in the preceding year “shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
I’m afraid Wiesel, Walesa, and King would have to say, as Jesus did, presumably with a deep and resigned sigh, “I came not to bring peace but a sword.”
Of the 128 gold medals for peace that have been handed out since 1901, maybe six or seven have gone to people who actually made peace.
President Theodore Roosevelt negotiated an end to the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War in 1906 after Japan won. Argentina’s Foreign Minister Carlos Saavedra Lamas did the same in the 1932-1935 Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay after Paraguay won.
President of Costa Rica Oscar Arias laid a calming hand on 1980s El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Panama. There isn’t much armed conflict in Central America any more, if you don’t count constant massive narco gang slaughter.
Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk ended apartheid in South Africa nonviolently when de Klerk bent over and the nation kicked him in the butt.
Northern Irish pols, papist John Hume and prod David Trimble, did in fact get Ulster’s Micks to quit shooting and bombing each other any more than absolutely necessary, but it took them 500 years.
At least 65 Peace Prizes have been awarded for wishful thinking. Sometimes the wishful thinking was done by institutions—Permanent International Peace Bureau (1910), International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (1985), Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (really, 1995). The United Nations and its leadership have received ten gold medals, more than Mark Spitz or Carl Lewis, and won with considerably less speed and effort.
Sometimes the wishful thinking was done by well-known individuals—the Dalai Lama and Ralph Bunche. More often it was done by individuals who have been well-forgotten—Charles Albert Gobat, Tobias Asser, Ludwig Quidde, Lord Boyd-Orr.
Then there are the Prizes given for patching up people during the absence of peace—the American Friends Service Committee, Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross four times. All highly deserved, but none would have been awarded if it hadn’t been for war.
I propose a Nobel Prize for just that. The Nobel War Prize. There are, after all, worthy and decent wars. What was America supposed to do after Pearl Harbor, put the keys to the Golden Gate in an airmail envelope and send them to Tojo?
Peace creeps to the contrary, you can usually tell who’s right and who’s wrong in a war. Which is more than can be said during peace, witness peacetime politics.
There are always lots of wars going on so the Nobel Committee would never have to skip a year the way it did with its Peace Prize in 1914, 1915, 1916, 1918, 1923, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1948, 1955, 1956, 1966, 1967, and 1972.
Wars produce heroes widely recognized by the public. Nobel War Prizes could have been given to Marshal Foch for the Battle of the Marne, Spanish Civil War combatant George Orwell, Winston Churchill, the French Resistance, the U.S. Marine Corps, the Tuskegee Airmen, Charles de Gaulle, FDR, Ike. This is an improvement on the Permanent International Peace Bureau, Charles Albert Gobat, and Ludwig Quidde. The Nobel Foundation’s P.R. profile would be considerably raised.
Then there’s what often comes after a war, which is usually less silly than what comes after a Nobel Peace Prize. Look at the U.S. and Great Britain. Once we got past that 1776 thing we’ve been—with a brief time-out for the War of 1812—road dawgs.
The Southern States and the Northern States after the Civil War? We’re so close that we date-swapped the political parties that had been screwing us.
The Europeans were at daggers drawn for more than 30 years. But look at them after 1945, brothers from other mothers, living in each other’s pockets, Germany lending to France to pay Greece to repay Germany, friends with benefits.
And ever since we started passing notes on the deck of the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, America and Japan have been Batman and Robin.
If you want peace, have a war. Just make sure to have a good, prize-winning one.
3)
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| US Secretary of State John Kerry called on Sunday for a renewed commitment to achieving Middle East peace, saying a lasting deal between Israel, the Palestinians and all their neighbors could be achieved. "Out of this conference must come not just money but a renewed commitment from everybody to work for peace that meets the aspirations of all, for Israelis, for Palestinians for all people of this region. And I promise you the full commitment of president Obama, myself and the United States to try to do that," Kerry told a Gaza reconstruction conference in Cairo. "Everything else will be a band aid fix, not a long-term solution... Everything else will be the prisoner of impatience and that has brought us to this unacceptable and unstable status quo." The latest round of US-brokered peace talks foundered in April over Israeli objections to a Palestinian political unity pact including the Islamist Hamas movement and Palestinian objections to unremitting Israeli settlement growth. Kerry also announced an additional $212 million in aid to the Palestinian people at the Cairo conference, saying, "The people of Gaza do need our help desperately, not tomorrow, not next week, but they need it now." Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas spoke at the international donors conference as well, saying that Gaza needs four billion dollars in aid to rehabilitate the coastal territory following 50 days of fighting between Hamas and Israel. He said he believed the international community would rise to the occasion and provide much-needed funds for reconstruction, reiterating the need to adopt a resolution that imposes a time frame on Israel's withdrawal from the West Bank. It is no longer acceptable to live in a state of repeated wars, Abbas said as he laid out the recent battles plaguing Gaza – three in six years – and the fallen victims (3,760) and demolished homes (80,000) that followed. Thanking Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for his efforts to achieve an agreement and help promote the Palestinian cause, Abbas said the PA would continue to work closely with Egypt on reaching a lasting truce. As for the situation in the West Bank, the PA chief said that Israel's continued settlement activity was harmful to the economy and prevented the Palestinians from developing large chunks of the West Bank. "There must be an international approach" to ending the decades-old conflict, Abbas stated, which must include a Palestinian state. |
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